clan

clan,

social group based on actual or alleged unilineal descent from a common ancestor. Such groups have been known in all parts of the world and include some that claim the parentage or special protection of an animal, plant, or other object (see totemtotem, an object, usually an animal or plant (or all animals or plants of that species), that is revered by members of a particular social group because of a mystical or ritual relationship that exists with that group......Click the link for more information.). They also include such familiar groups as the Highland clans of Scotland (the English word clan comes from Gaelic). Most clans stress mutual obligations and duties. Clan descent is traced in one line only, male or female. The word clan has by some been restricted to those descended through the mother (matrilineal) in contrast to the gensgens, ancient Roman kinship group. It was the counterpart of what is known in other societies as a patrilineal clan or sib, and the word has been used in social science as a generic term for such groupings......Click the link for more information., descended through the father (patrilineal). The word sib has been much used to cover both types. A clan includes several family groups. Most clans are exogamous and regard marriages among their members as incest. A clan is distinguished from a lineage in that a clan merely claims common ancestry; a lineage can be traced to a common progenitor. A clan may have several lineages. Several clans may be combined into a larger social group called a phratry. If a tribe includes two clans or phratries, each clan or phratry is called a moiety.

Clan

(1) Among the Celtic peoples, chiefly the Irish, Scotch, and Welsh, the name of a family or more rarely of a tribe. Later, when the extended family system was breaking down, the clan was a group of blood relatives who were descendants of one ancient family and who bore the name of the supposed founder of the family. To this name the Scotch and Irish add the prefix Mac (son); in the case of the Irish, the prefix O’ (grandson) is also used. Clans maintained common ownership of the land, which was given out to families for cultivation. They also observed such older customs as blood revenge, collective responsibility, and election of elders. As feudalism developed, the clans adapted to it. When the English were colonizing Ireland, they carried out massive expropriations of the clans’ landholdings. The clan system was officially abolished in 1605, although clan organizations were preserved in individual regions of Scotland and Wales into the 19th century.

(2) In contemporary ethnographic literature (chiefly non-Soviet), a term used in the same sense as the Russian term rod.

Clan

an exogamous group of blood relatives who trace their descent either matrilineally or patrilineally, who consider themselves descended from a common ancestor (real or mythical), and who bear a common family name.

The clan developed from the primitive human herd probably on the boundary of the Lower and Upper Paleolithic periods. Clans could not exist in isolation because of the law of exogamy, and from the very beginning they joined into tribes. Initially, a tribe consisted of two clans bound together by marital ties. Later, these clans subdivided and consequently more clans, united into phratries, were included in the tribe.

F. Engels gave the first scientific materialist explanation of the early history of mankind based on the abundant factual material collected in the fields of history, ethnography, and archaeology, and particularly on the works of L. H. Morgan. Specifically, Engels revealed the essence of the clan structure, including such characteristic features as primitive collectivism and the absence of private property, classes, and the monogamous family.

There are many differences in viewpoint regarding the history of clan development both between scholars with varying ideological positions and between Marxist researchers, inasmuch as ethnographers can directly study only relatively late forms of clan organization. Differences between Marxist scholars, however, are over particular rather than general questions. According to a viewpoint popular in Soviet science, a society based on the clan system passes consecutively through two stages of development—an era of matrilineal clans, or matriclans, and an era of patrilineal clans, or patricians.

In a matrilineal clan, productive relations usually coincided with the relations between blood relatives. These relations were characterized by collective labor and consumption, by common clan ownership of the basic means of production, and by equality in communal affairs. Thus, the clan was the socioeconomic unit of primitive society.

The transition to the second stage, or the era of the patrilineal clan, took place with the development of productive forces. For many peoples this transition was associated with the spread of pastoral cattle raising, plow agriculture, and metallurgy. The economic unit of society became the large patriarchal family. The clan retained primarily a control over marriage rights and its religious and ritualistic functions. Gradually, clan relationships disintegrated and were replaced by territorial relationships. Neighborly communes were formed by patriarchal families of various clans living side by side.

The small family group developed as the economic unit of society, although initially it was part of territorial associations called rural communes. Clan relationships were gradually completely replaced by class relationships as a result of the societal changes that had occurred. However, certain clan structures were often preserved even after the development of a class society, particularly among nomadic and mountain peoples; today, this phenomenon can be observed, for example, among the Tuaregs of the Sahara, the Turkomans, and the Kurds. As a rule, at this stage of development there was a hierarchy of clans, and some clans ruled over others. The clan structure was maintained for a particularly long time among the aristocratic elite of nomadic peoples.

According to another viewpoint accepted in Soviet literature, even in its early stage of development the clan was not an economic unit; its chief function was the control of marriage rights. Moreover, the clan developed into either a matrilineal or patrilineal form, depending on concrete circumstances and not on its stage of development. The economic unit of society and the most important social organism was the commune, which, because of the law of exogamy, included representatives of different clans. In matrilocal residence the men lived with the clan commune of the wife, and in patrilocal residence the women lived with the clan commune of the husband. The core of such a commune consisted of representatives of a single clan. According to this viewpoint, the clan and the commune were societal units that were different but were able to coexist. The relationship between the clan and the commune continues to be studied.

A clan is also a series of generations descended from a single real ancestor, such as the Pushkin clan.

Mohamed Lamine Hormat Allah, Sheikh taking part in identification operation, former resistance fighter, member of liberation army, former CORCAS member, former member of Sahrawi community, former detainee in Mauritania for stand in favor of Sahara's Moroccan identity (could not attend for health issues, wissam handed to his son Mohamed Hormat Allah).

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